Reunion (10 page)

The base, therefore, could have simply gone to ground, tucked away in a crevasse or under the thick silt of the atmospheric soup. If it could be found, it could be reactivated. Assuming, of course, that the Yuuzhan Vong hadn’t found it first and destroyed it for good.

Leia sent her thoughts outward, far beyond her location in hyperspace, beyond Esfandia and whatever awaited them there, to her brother, Luke. The last message Cal Omas had received from him suggested he’d found a promising lead and was setting off to investigate. He hadn’t specified what that lead consisted of or where he was headed, and now there was no way they would know unless they repaired the communications outage. Leia had no doubt that, were anything terrible to happen to him, then she would know about it. She would
feel
it, just as she had in the past. Nevertheless, she was concerned. So much was invested in his mission—personally, and on a galactic scale—that if something were to go wrong, it would be a disaster of unimaginable proportions.

The conversation between her husband and his old friend shifted as the
Falcon
’s console began to beep and flash, announcing that they were nearing their destination.

“Right on the nose,” Han said proudly, flipping switches in readiness for the return to realspace.

“And we didn’t even have to get out and push,” Droma said dryly.

“Yeah, that’s real amusing,” Han returned without smiling. “Now you want to move your funny, fuzzed-up self out of that chair so Leia can come forward and help me?”

“No, that’s all right, Han,” she said as Droma began to stand. “I’m sure Droma can manage.”

She couldn’t say that she was enjoying the break from routine, but it was interesting to watch Han’s interaction with the Ryn. Memories of the terrible time when Han had pulled away from her while grieving for Chewbacca still stung, but only Droma had witnessed how low Han had really sunk back then. If having the Ryn aboard did remind Han of those painful times, he certainly wasn’t letting it show.

“You remember how to operate the copilot’s board?”
Han asked Droma without looking up from what he was doing.

“Follow orders, and curse when something goes wrong,” Droma replied with a smile. “Which it invariably does.”

Han affected an indignant expression on behalf of his beloved freighter. “Hey, she may be old—”

“But she’s still got it where it counts, right?” Droma said.

“What have I told you about doing that?” Han said irritably.

Droma laughed. “Anyway, it’s not the age of the ship that worries me,” he said, flicking a couple of switches of his own. “It’s the age of the pilot I’m more concerned about.”

The navicomputer bleeped, cutting off any retort Han might have been about to offer. Both faced the front just as the sweeping streaks of hyperspace dissolved into a cold and distant starscape. There was no primary to dim the stars with its glare; the nearest inhabited system in this section of the Mid Rim was more than ten light-years away, and the nearest star of any kind was half that distance. There was nothing for trillions of kilometers but space dust, and the tiny bauble that was the lonely world of Esfandia.

Or so it
should
have been. As
Pride of Selonia
along with Twin Suns Squadron emerged from hyperspace alongside the
Falcon
, Droma’s eyes checked the sensor console for the orphaned planet. The
Falcon
’s sensor suite was still ahead of standard tech, and it soon acquired the target. It was covered with thick clouds, and glowed a burnt orange in artificial colors that looked wrong to Leia’s eyes until she realized what was missing: because Esfandia had no sun, its sole source of heat lay at its core. And with no orbit to follow, that meant it would have no seasons, either—which in turn meant no icy poles, and no
broiling equator. It would be the same temperature all over.

Closer scans, however, revealed that not to be entirely the case. There were at least six hot spots on the hemisphere facing them, and even as they watched, another blossomed into life.

Droma zoomed in closer to examine the cause.

“Aerial bombardment,” he said. “Someone’s dropping mines from orbit.”

“They’re taking out the sensors,” Leia said. “The Yuuzhan Vong are still here!”

Han’s eyes darted across the displays in front of him. “I’ve got a strong presence in close orbit. Seven capital vessels, nine cruisers. Not many skips detached, though. No sign of the local defenses, or the reinforcements from Mon Cal.”

“I think I can guess why not, too,” Droma commented.

Leia knew exactly what he meant. The Yuuzhan Vong force in orbit over Esfandia was enormous by any standard. Against the two squadrons and one frigate Esfandia had possessed, plus the two squadrons Mon Calamari had dispatched to investigate, it was almost obscene.
Overkill
didn’t cover it.

“I thought the Vong’s resources were stretched,” Droma said.

Han just grunted. A crackle of information flowed across newly reopened communications lines. Captain Mayn and Jag were looking for instructions.

“Tell them to hold off for a moment,” Leia ordered. “We can’t go in like this. It’d be suicide.”

Han turned in his seat to face her. “We can’t just leave, Leia.”

She nodded in agreement. “The relay base must still be down there, otherwise the Yuuzhan Vong wouldn’t be wasting time taking out the sensors. Without the base, none of it would work.”

“So what are we going to do?” Han asked. “They’re going to see us any second.”

Leia stood to look over Han’s shoulder, placing a hand gently on his neck. The Yuuzhan Vong forces were formidable. “If we can get past the capital ships, we might be able to make it down into the atmosphere and find the base before they do.”

“Then what?” Droma asked. “We’d be in exactly the same position as the base. It would just be a matter of time before they find us.”

She could feel her frustration mounting as a solution to the dilemma failed to present itself. If they had to abandon Esfandia, they might still be able to jury-rig another relay base elsewhere that would allow them to reestablish contact with Mon Calamari.

She shook her head irritably. It would still mean leaving innocents here on Esfandia to die, and the thought of that simply made her feel ill, reminding her as it did of the time back on Gyndine, where so many had to be abandoned to a cruel fate.

There has to be another way
, she thought.

Almost in answer to the thought, a bleeping sounded from the sensor suite, announcing hyperspace emissions from the far side of the planet.

“Incoming,” Droma announced, his tail wrapped around the base of his chair, gently twitching.

“That’s all we need,” Han muttered. “Maybe it’s time we bid a hasty retreat, after all.”

“Hold on.” Leia switched vantage points to look over Droma’s shoulder. “I don’t think they’re Yuuzhan Vong. Broadcast an emergency on the Imperial codes.”

“Imperial—?” Han started, but clammed up at a glance at the scanner display. The corner of his mouth curled up into a grin as he sent off the coded transmission. “Well, I never thought I’d be glad to see a Star Destroyer.”

Not just one of them, Leia noted. Two of the massive
vessels were lumbering out of hyperspace over Esfandia, fully equipped with support vessels and TIE fighters already streaming from launching bays. The way they swooped in to engage the Yuuzhan Vong filled her with an immediate sense of optimism and kinship.

She didn’t immediately recognize the markings on the Star Destroyers, but judging by the blast scoring and other minor damage, it looked like they’d both recently seen combat.

The
Falcon
’s comm bleeped, and Han quickly answered it. It was Grand Admiral Pellaeon.

“I should have known I’d find the
Millennium Falcon
here,” he said. “You’re always at the heart of trouble.”

Leia felt a smile creep across her face. “It’s good to hear from you, Gilad.”

“As it is you, Princess,” he said.

“That’s not
Chimaera
you’re flying,” Han put in. “It looks too old.”

“It’s
Right to Rule
,” Pellaeon said. “One of the oldest in the fleet. We’ve been chasing this sorry bunch halfway across the galaxy, trying to restrict the amount of damage they inflict. We lost them at the last jump, which is why we’ve only just arrived. Our intelligence data on your remote stations is sadly out of date.”

“Not as good as theirs, obviously,” Leia said.

“We’re here to try to turn our luck around now.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Are you joining us?”

“We’re at your command, Admiral.” Leia said.

“I’ll have targets for you shortly. Commander Ansween will relay them to you.” Then, almost as an afterthought, the Grand Admiral added: “Nice to be fighting beside you finally, Captain Solo.”

Han looked up at Leia when the line closed a moment later. “We’re taking orders from an Imperial now?”

“Things have changed,” she said. Her heart was telling her that Pellaeon could be trusted, and the Force was telling her the same thing. “He’s defending a Galactic Alliance asset. Think how strange that must feel to
him.
”

Han chuckled ruefully. “I guess. It’s just that I’ve never been one for taking orders—from
anyone
. I hope this newfound camaraderie between us isn’t going to make him think that’s about to change.”

Leia smiled at her husband; one hand fondly massaged his neck. “I’m sure Pellaeon’s fully aware of that, Han.”

The comm unit crackled back to life, this time with a female voice—obviously the commander whom the Grand Admiral had mentioned.

“Your primary target is the destroyer
Kur-hashan
,” she said. A flood of charts and other data accompanied the message on the
Falcon
’s monitors. “This is a yammosk-bearing vessel. Secondary targets are support vessels. Engage at will.
Right to Rule
out.”

Han punched a course into the navicomputer. “You got that,
Selonia
?”

“Loud and clear,” came back the voice of Captain Mayn.

“Jag?”

“Twin Suns awaits your orders, Captain,” Jag said. He sounded calm and controlled, but underneath the cool exterior Leia knew he was primed and ready for combat.

“Are we about to do what I think we’re about to do?” Droma asked, somewhat nervously.

“You’re the one always second-guessing everyone,” Han replied. “You tell us.”

“It doesn’t take much foresight to know we’re still outnumbered. While it’s nice that we have company and all, it still only makes two Star Destroyers against sixteen of the big uglies.”

“I know,” Han said, a wide, familiar grin settling onto his face. “It makes it so much more interesting when the odds are stacked against you, don’t you think?”

CONFRONTATION

Blood
. That was the first thing Nom Anor noticed as he emerged from the warrens under Yuuzhan’tar: not the sudden sharpness of light, or the wind, or even the towering remains of the planet’s previous rulers. It was the smell of blood, thick and heavy on the air.

He breathed in deeply, and smiled to himself.

The Prophet and his entourage were on the move again. Nom Anor, Shoon-mi, and Kunra all accompanied Ngaaluh as she supposedly spearheaded an investigation into religious corruption in the renamed Vishtu sector of Yuuzhan’tar. Officials at all levels eased her passage. Her sudden notoriety had preceded her: who better than a priestess of the deception sect to uncover deception among the higher ranks?

Ngaaluh brought with her an extensive entourage of her own, all unaware that she was in fact the servant of the corruptor, and that the corruptor himself moved among them. It was the perfect cover. Nom Anor, under heavy disguise, had taken the persona of a lowly worker, the next rung up from a Shamed One. It was his job to supervise the care of the baggage-vrrips, massive six-legged bovine creatures bred purely to haul heavy loads from place to place. The goods in Ngaaluh’s case consisted solely of records, plus five prisoners for interrogation. Nom Anor had overseen the selection of these
prisoners. They consisted of would-be heretics: a handful who had proven too unreliable or mentally unstable to be of any use to him or the cause. Nom Anor, in his guise as the Prophet Yu’shaa, had fed them very specific lies. Allowed to think that the Prophet had accepted them, these five had been sent out to spread a perverted version of the word of Yu’shaa. Ngaaluh’s spies—still faithful to Shimrra, and believing they were doing the will of the Supreme Commander—had caught them in due course. Interrogation would reveal terrible secrets about Vishtu sector and the various officials who oversaw it. Thus they did the work of Nom Anor by unwittingly spreading misinformation.

“Halt!”

Nom Anor whipped his vrrips into line as Ngaaluh’s caravan approached the entrance to Vishtu’s command enclave. The clumsy entourage staggered to a halt in a cloud of dust. Bugs swarmed around them, getting under hoods and into clothes, driven mad by the smell of blood. Two warriors guarded the entrance, grotesquely armored and scarred in imaginative ways. One of them growled for authorization, and Ngaaluh’s chief underling presented it for inspection. Security was tight. Ngaaluh watched from an ornate seat on the back of the largest vrrip as one of the guards checked and double-checked her authenticity. Her expression was one of weariness—appropriate for the moment, thought Nom Anor, and probably quite genuine, too. The journey had been long and tiring, even from the comfort of Ngaaluh’s seat.